A study of class consciousness of ``Victorian society`` as represented by characters in Jane Austen`s Emma - USD Repository

  

A STUDY OF CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS OF “VICTORIAN SOCIETY”

AS REPRESENTED BY CHARACTERS

  

IN JANE AUSTEN’S EMMA

A Thesis Presented to

the Graduate Program in English Language Studies

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of

  

Magister Humaniora (M.Hum.)

in

English Language Studies

  

By:

Eko Budi Setiawan

Student Number: 026332009

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY

  

YOGYAKARTA

2007

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

  This is to certify that all the ideas, phrases, and sentences, unless otherwise stated, are the ideas, phrases sentences of the thesis writer. The writer understands the full consequences including degree cancellation if he took somebody else’s ideas, phrases, or sentences without proper reference.

  Eko Budi Setiawan

  

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE …………………………………………………………………….. i Statement of Thesis Approval ...………………………………………………… ii Statement of Thesis Defense Approval ………………………………………….iii Statement of Originality ………………………………………………………… iv Table of Contents …………………………………………………………………v Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………..……… vii Abstract …………………………………………………………………………viii Abstrak ……………………………………………………………………………x

  CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION A. Background of the Study……...……………………………………….….1 B. Problem Limitation……...……………………………………………….. 5 C. Problem Formulation………...………………………………………..…..5 D. Research Goals……………………………………………………….…....6

CHAPTER II : REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE, THEORETICAL

REVIEW, AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK A. Review of Related Literature..…..………………………………………...7 B. Theoretical Review……………………………………………………....12

  1. Marxism in Literature………………………………………………....12

  2. The Definition of Class………………………………………………..14

  3. Frederick Jameson’s Marxism………………………………………...16

  4. Victorian Era…………………………………………………………. 21

  a. Victorian Era in England ………………………………………….. 21

  b. The Values of Victorian Era in Emma .…………………………. 25

  5. Hegemony of Victorian Era in Emma ………………………………. 25

  6. Contradiction ……………………………………………………….…26 C. Theoretical Framework…..……………………………………………....29

  CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY A. Subject Matter…………………………………………………………....32 B. Research Procedure……………………………………………………....33 C. Data Analysis…………………………………………………………….34 D. Research Sources………………………………………………………...34

  CHAPTER IV: THE ANALYSIS OF CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS OF “VICTORIAN SOCIETY” AS REPRESENTED BY CHARACTERS IN EMMA A. The Economic Base as the Foundation of Class Formation….…………36

  1. The Dominant Class………………………………………………...…37

  a. Emma Woodhouse…………………………………………...…..…38

  b. Mr. George Knightley…………………………………..…….…….47

  2. Class between the Dominant and Laboring Class ……………………52

  3.Laboring Class………………………………………….……………...55

  a. Miss Bates ……………………………………………..…………...56

  b. Robert Martin………………………………………………...……..57 B. Ideology as a Means to Maintain Class Status……………….……….…60

  1. The Dominant Class…………………………………………………...60

  a. Emma Woodhouse ..………………………………………………..61

  b. Mr. George Knightley ………….………………………………….64

  2. The Laboring Class …...……………………………………………....67

  a. Mr. Robert Martin …………..……………………………………...68

  b. Miss. Bates …………..……………………………………………..70 C. The Class-Contestation in Emma ……….………………………………72

  1. Conflicts between the Dominant and Laboring ………………………73

  a. The Conflicts between Emma Woodhouse and Robert Martin……75

  b. The Conflicts Between Emma Woodhouse and Miss. Bates…….... 80

  2. Conflicts within the Dominant………………………………………...80

  CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION A. Conclusions………………………………………………………………86 B. Suggestion……………………………………………………………..…88 BIBLIOGRAPHY

  …………………………………………………………….. 89

  APPENDICES:

  1. The Synopsis of Emma ………………..……………………………………..91

  2. The Biography of Jane Austen ………………………………………………. 97

  

Acknowledgements

  I thank Jesus Christ for blessing me and guiding me in conducting this research. His love and guidance have helped me and motivated me to accomplish this thesis. I believe in Him because He exists in my life.

  Second I would like to appreciate Dr. St. Sunardi, my advisor for patiently giving me help, great and insightful ideas as well as encouragement. Then, I would also like to say much thank to Dra Sri Mulyani, M.A. and Drs. Fx. Siswadi, M.A. who have also given me comments, inputs, references and constructive encouragement in the writing process. Furthermore, I will remember all lecturers’ kindness and love at my class (the students of 2002) in ELS.

  I offer special thanks to B.Justisianto, Pr.Lic.Phil., the Rector of the University of Widya Mandala Madiun for pursuing a higher level of education and for your financial assistance (via APTIK) and chance for my better merit.

  Next, My gratitude goes to Dr. B.B. Dwijatmoko, M.A., the Head of English Language Studies of Sanata Dharma University. Thanks are also due to my classmates in ELS. Their advices, jokes have been appreciated.

  Accordingly, my super thanks deliver to my lovely wife, Yohana and my beloved daughters, Icha and Anggie. We are the happy family and some of our dreams will come true.

  

ABSTRACT

  EKO BUDI SETIAWAN, S.S. (2007). A Study of Class Consciousness of

Victorian Society as Represented by Characters in Jane Austen’s Emma .

Yogyakarta: The Graduate Program in English Language Studies, Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta.

  This study discusses a novel entitled Emma written by Jane Austen. Emma portrayed the lives of different classes in Victorian society through its characters. This classification of people is due to some factors such as economics, ideology, taste, hegemony and language. Each character in Emma is the representation of the classes exists in the novel. Each class member could attend the same balls without being really interfered by their different social classes. In this novel, of which the perfection of balance and style reflects the ultimate searching for elegance, everyone has her or his place, and everybody ultimately stays in it. In order to maintain their class status, each character uses different way. In doing so, there are some conflicts between and within characters. The conflicts, then, create a new atmosphere that forces each character to realize her or his class existence. The explanation above has evoked the writer’s curiosity to find out the class consciousness of Victorian society as represented by the characters in Emma.

  Three problems related to the topic of this thesis are: (1) How is the class- distinction of Victorian Society depicted in Emma?, (2) How do the bourgeoisie and proletariat maintain their social status in Victorian Society as represented by characters in Emma?, and (3) How is the contestation of class interest of Victorian Society in Emma?

  In order to answer the problems, a Marxist theory by Jameson is employed. In his theory, Jameson argues that the needed utopian ideology must be not only economic but also, indeed supremely, social and cultural. The utopian ideology needs not only plans for the egalitarian reorganization of economic production, such that people’s material needs are met, but also plans for new forms of affective and aesthetic life, such that people's emotional and spiritual needs are met. This theory is applicable in Emma, since the characters are engaged to each other not only based on the economic as a means of production, but also on the ideology, social and cultural aspects.

  Based on the analysis, the class formation in Emma is not only based on the economic of each character, but also based on the ideology, taste and hegemony, and language. They, altogether, form classes and influence the characters in maintaining their class status. People who possess huge economic base are the representation of the dominant class, whereas the others represent the laboring class. Because of their economic base, Emma Woodhouse and George Knightley could have comfortable lives. Therefore, they are the representation of the dominant class. On the contrary, Miss Bates and Robert Martin have hard lives and they are the representation of the laboring class. Each member of the class tries to climb their status, unexceptionally Emma Woodhouse and George Knightley. They act differently in order to maintain their class status. Emma Woodhouse is said to be snobbish, vain, manipulative, power-hungry, self- deluded, often indifferent to the feelings of others, and on at least one occasion scathingly cruel, whereas George Knightley was said to be a sensible gentleman. In the relation between characters, some conflicts arise between and within the members of classes. The conflicts between classes are shown by the relationship among Emma Woodhouse, Robert Martin, and Miss Bates. The conflict within class is shown through the relationship between Emma Woodhouse and George Knightley. These conflicts finally bring each character into class consciousness.

  

ABSTRAK

  EKO BUDI SETIAWAN, S.S. (2007). A Study of Class Consciousness of

Victorian Society as Represented by Characters in Jane Austen’s Emma.

Yogyakarta: Program Pasca Sarjana Kajian Bahasa Ingris, Universitas Sanata Dharma , Yogyakarta.

  Penelitian ini mengulas sebuah novel berjudul Emma yang ditulis oleh Jane Austen. Emma menggambarkan kehidupan kelas-kelas yang ada pada masyarakat Victorian melalui karakter-karakternya. Pengkotak-kotakan masyarakat ini dikarenakan beberapa faktor seperti ekonomi, ideologi, hegemoni rasa, dan bahasa. Setiap karakter di Emma adalah perwakilan dari masing-masing kelas. Setiap anggota kelas dapat menghadiri sebuah jamuan tanpa benar-benar terganggu oleh perbedaan kelas diantara mereka. Di novel ini, yang mana kesempurnaan bentuk dan gaya merupakan tujuan akhir sebuah kemewahan, setiap orang mempunyai tempatnya masing-masing dan setiap orang tetap pada kelasnya. Untuk memelihara status kelas mereka, setiap karakter melakukan hal yang berbeda-beda. Pada pelaksanaannya, ada beberapa konflik yang muncul antara karakter dan intern karakter. Konflik-konflik itu kemudian menciptakan suasana baru yang memaksa setiap karakter untuk menyadari keberadaan kelasnya masing-masing. Penjelasan diatas menggugah keingintahuan penulis untuk menemukan kesadaran kelas yang ada pada masyarakat Victorian seperti yang ditunjukkan oleh oleh karakter-karakter di Emma.

  Ada tiga masalah yang berhubungan dengan dengan topik thesis ini: (1) Bagaimana perbedaan kelas dalam masyarakat Victorian digambarkan dalam Novel Emma?, (2) Bagaimanakah kaum kaya dan kaum miskin memelihara status sosial mereka di masyarakat Victorian seperti yang direpresentasikan oleh karakter-karakter di Novel Emma?,dan (3) Bagaimanakah persaingan kepentingan kelas di masyarakat Victorian dalam Novel Emma?

  Untuk menjawab masalah-masalah tersebut, digunakanlah teori Marxist yang ditulis oleh Jameson. Jameson beralasan bahwa kebutuhan ideologi masyarakat utopia bukan hanya dalam hal ekonomi tetapi juga sosial budaya. Ideologi masyarakat utopia membutuhkan bukan hanya rencana untuk persamaan ekonomi, misalnya terpenuhinya kebutuhan ekonomi semua orang, tetapi juga rencana untuk kehidupan estetika yang baru., misalnya kebutuhan emosional dan spiritual masyarakat terpenuhi. Teori ini dapat dipakai untuk menganalisa Emma karena setiap karakter berhubungan satu demngan yang lainnya bukan hanya berdasarkan ekonomi sebagai sarana produksi, tetapi juga berdasarkan pada aspek ideologi, sosial dan budaya.

  Berdasarkan analisis, pembentukan kelas di Emma bukan hanya berdasarkan pada tingkat ekonomi setiap karakter, tetapi juga berdasarkan ideologi, hegemoni rasa, dan bahasa. Mereka bersama-sama membentuk kelas dan mempengaruhi karakter dalam usahanya mempertahankan status kelas mereka. Orang yang memiliki dasar ekonomi yang sangat banyak merupakan perwakilan kelas dominant, sedangkan yang sebaliknya mencerminkan kelas pekerja. Karena dasar ekonomi mereka, Emma Woodhouse dan george Knightley menjalani kehidupan yang nyaman. Oleh karena itu mereka berdua dikategorikan dalam kelas dominant. Sebaliknya, Miss Bates dan Robert Martin menjalani kehidupan yang susah dan mereka cerminan dari kelas pekerja. Setiap anggota kelas berusaha untuk menaikkan status mereka, tak terkecuali Emma Woodhouse dan George Knightley. Mereka bersikap berbeda. Emma Woodhouse dikatakan bersifat manja, sombong, suka mengatur, haus kekuasaan, suka berkhayal, acuh tak acuh terhadap perasaaan orang lain, dan kejam, sedangkan George Knightley dikatakan sebagai pria yang bijaksana. Dalam hubungan antar karakter, muncul beberapa konflik intra dan inter karakter. Konflik intra karakter ditunjukkan oleh hubungan antara Emma Woodhouse, Robert Martin, dan Miss Bates. Konflik dalam kelas ditunjukkan oleh hubungan antara Emma Woodhouse and George Knightley. Konflik-konflik ini pada akhirnya membawa setiap karakter menuju kesadaran kelas.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Background of the Study In our everyday lives, many of us use the language of class to refer to a

  social hierarchy and knowing your place within it. Scott (1999: 1) states that class is a matter of breeding and of social background. It is reflected in our attitudes and our lifestyles, our accents, and our ways of dressing. Class distinctions are tied to a world of tradition and subordination that no longer exists and the language of class is incompatible with contemporary attitudes and values.

  Throughout history, men and woman have expressed their dissatisfaction with their present condition through written and spoken words. In Britain, as in other countries, writers have often questioned the values held dear by the majority of their country people. Thinkers in a society, writers among them, are the persons most likely to examine prevailing values and to discern flaws in the social structure before these flaws have been recognized by society as a whole.

  Williams (2001: 63) states that cultural history must be more than the sum of the par ticular histories, for it is with the relations between them, the particular forms of the whole organization, that it is especially concerned. Furthermore, he defines the theory of culture as the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life. It can be concluded that analysis of the culture is the attempt to discover the nature of the organization, which is the complex of these relationships.

  Jameson (1981) provides a model for literary-historical analysis which emphasizes the function of literary genres in ideology production and which places genres in their contemporary social formations. Jameson asserts an inevitable interrelationship between the aesthetic value and the specific historicity (seen in terms of ideological function) of the literary text. Additionally, Jameson (1981: 79) suggests that from this perspective, ideology is not something which informs or invests symbolic production; rather the aesthetic or narrative form is to be seen as an ideological act in its own right, with the function of inventing imaginary or formal solutions to irresolvable social contradictions.

  Jameson attempts, in symbolic struggle between textual typifications of the bourgeoisie and the nobility, to ask how the force necessary to bring about a return to the old order can be imagined without severe social disruption ( 1981: 173). Jameson’s notion of ideology thus has a strong narrative component.

  Textual interpretation is a matter of symbolic acts of a novel or romance, which represent the imaginary resolution of a real contradiction in social relations. Texts become, as it were, optional trial runs on a historical problem, daydreams about the nightmare of history (1981: 174).

  The conflict of social classes establishes the reasons upon which ideological conflicts arise (Paris, 1978). Literature and art belong to the ideological sphere, but possess a relationship to ideology which is often less direct even than is found in the case of religion, legal and philosophical system (Brooker, 1997: 89). Langland (1948: 7) clarifies that literature can mean something beside itself as soon as an author makes selection arrangement, and organization of the desperate elements of culture; the arrangement takes on meaning and value. Different authors may depict society differently but society plays essentially the same formal role that is antagonist to individual protagonist. Society becomes a context to the characters’ growth and self-realization.

  McKernan (1993: 7) says that Jane Austen writes about a world long gone and regretted – a golden age of leisured gentlemen and ladies, comfortable, elegant, redolent of a vanished simplicity and taste. She provides for some an escape from the bleakness of time. Austen writes about a world that is insular, middle-class and deadly. McKernan (1993: 10) also states that class, the great winnower, is the major preoccupation of Emma. In this novel, whose perfection of symmetry and style reflects the ultimate quest for elegance, everyone has their place, and everybody ultimately stays in it.

  Emma

  as one of Jane Austen’s novels dramatizes the tensions between a pre-capitalist, feudal order in which status hierarchies are strictly maintained and a capitalist order in which vertical social mobility is more possible through merit. These tensions are embodied in the figure of Mr. George Knightley. He criticizes Emma’s attempts to raise Harriet Smith out of her station and his estate of Donwell Abbey represents a fixed, stable, stratified and coherent order associated with this vision of society as inherently hierarchical. He fails to see either that this social mobility is the very thing which capitalism makes possible, or that by reinvesting his profits on the land at Donwell Abbey.

  Mr. George Knightley is a personification of the agrarian capitalist, who spends the little spare money, he has frugally and who sensibly reinvests his profits in the farm. He prefers looking to his accounts than dancing and recognizes in his tenant Robert Martin a man who shares his own values, despite their differences in rank. The character of Mr. George Knightley, then, can symbolically resolve the determinate contradictions, which are registered within the novel. He combines the elegance and refinement of the natural aristocrat with the moral, capitalist virtues of industry and thrift. This symbolic act is possible within Austen’s notorious limit of three or four families in a country village.

  Emma portrayed the lives of different classes in Victorian society through

  its characters. There are upper class, middle class and lower class people who could attend the same balls without being really interfered by their different social classes. However, there is still a feeling of superior towards others as represented by the characters of Emma Woodhouse when she deals with Miss Bates and Robert Martin.

  The Victorian Age, which spans from 1837 to 1901, is chronologically divided into three, namely early, middle, and late Victorian Age. Although Emma was written in 1816 (the early of nineteenth century), Jane Austen has successfully foreshadowed the early Victorian Age. The characters and society in

  Emma

  depict the early Victorian Age. This can be seen from the balls that the characters held, from the clothes they wear, from the speech and action they conduct, and from the relationship between characters. Accordingly, this research focuses on Austen’s work to Victorian society not based on the chronology but some shared values aspects in Emma and Victorian Age.

  Based on the above facts, the writer is inspired to conduct a research focusing on class-consciousness of Victorian society in Emma.

  B. Problem Limitation

  This research focuses on Jane Austen’s Emma. The analysis will be concentrated on the Victorian society’s class-consciousness interpreted by characters. In order to make this writing focus on the main problems, issues of social status in Emma are covered. Secondly, the writer of the thesis also depicts the class-distinction and class interest of Victorian Society as portrayed on the char acters through their dialogues or conversations and all statements stated by the narrators in Emma. Thirdly, the depiction of bourgeoisie and proletariat maintain their social status will be interpreted. Those aspects will be analyzed in this research. The study also tries to describe the cultural background of the novel besides the biographical data of the novelist. Although the dialogues and conversations in the novel indicate colloquialism and their local color, all of these linguistic features will not be analyzed as an independent aspect since they belong to certain class of society, which in this research will be included in the analysis of cultural aspects.

  C. Problem Formulation

  Having considered the problem limitation of the thesis, some questions are raised. There are three questions, and all are based on class-consciousness of Victorian Society in Emma. Then, those questions will be answered in the analysis of the thesis. Those questions can be stated as follows:

1. How is the class-distinction of Victorian Society depicted in Emma? 2.

  How do the bourgeoisie and proletariat maintain their social status in Victorian Society as represented by characters in Emma? 3. How is the contestation of class interest of Victorian Society in Emma?

D. Research Goals

  This thesis tries to explain Emma as an evidence of British culture, especially in Victorian Era of the British history. Those main objectives are formulated in the following statements.

  1. To depict the class-distinction of Victorian Society in Emma.

  2. To present how bourgeoisie and proletariat maintain their social status in Victorian Society as represented by characters in Emma 3. To describe the contestation of class interest of Victorian Society in Emma.

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE, THEORETICAL REVIEW, AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK A. Review of Related Literature The focus of research and criticism relating to Austen’s works, as one

  might imagine, has fluctuated somewhat over the years, particularly as it relates to

  Emma

  . When Austen wrote Emma, her contemporary critics were trying to discern its meaning, and scholars today are still laboring over what Austen might have been trying to say. As might be expected, critics of her day and the years immediately following saw this work as belonging in the genre of the romantic novel; possible complex properties or abstract meanings were not analyzed. Many of the recent criticisms, however, have focused on the feminist and ironic qualities of Austen’s work; others deal with the different aspects of Austen’s innovative method of alternating narrative consciousness and voice.

  This latter group examines Austen’s technique for allowing the reader to become intimately acquainted with her main character. However, even older critics, that was Wayne Booth (1960s), studied and analyzed her method of narrative consciousness. Although the center of Booth’s work deals with Austen’s control of distance in the minds of her characters, he, too, discusses the reader’s increasing intimacy with the protagonist. One narrative technique discussed is the free indirect style of narration and how it creates for the reader an illusion of entry into the consciousness of fictional characters.

  The criticism by Austen’s contemporaries reveals that some features of

  

Emma , as a romantic novel, were valued while others were not. In the Quarterly

Review for 1815, Sir Walter Scott declared that there was really not much

  substance to Emma. (Scott, 1972: 52) Scott (1972: 12) abbreviated the list of the cast of characters, and took the story at face value, equating unassuming and unpretentious with inconsequential.

  Accordingly, he has not attributed any of the features of Austen’s style of writing to the purpose of the novel. Nor does he consider any of the implications of the placement in society of Austen’s characters. It should be pointed out that Scott made a telling shift from plot to character in his review.

  When viewed in today’s context, these particular remarks might be termed as damning with faint praise. He delves not into the development of Austen’s characters, but, rather, treats them as static, arbitrary, familiar figures. He has, with a few words, marginalized Austen’s Emma as a shallow, non-taxing fable.

  His reading of the novel has touched only the surface of her text. (Scott, 1972: 151)

  Years after that, Casey Finch and Peter Bowen in their article “The Tittle-

  Tattle of Highbury

  : Gossip and the Free Indirect Style in Emma (1990),” quote from a study by V. N. Voloshinov and Mikhail Bakhtin that essentially deconstructs the free indirect style:

  ….. any utterance in free indirect style is treated by the narrative machinery “as an utterance belonging to someone else, an utterance that was originally totally independent, complete in its construction, and lying outside the given context.” From its “independent existence,” this utterance is transposed into an authorial context while retaining its own referential content and at least the rudiments of its own linguistic integrity. “Paradoxically, the free indirect style enables the representation of a seemingly private, independent subject—able to speak his or her own mind at any time—even as it guarantees public access to any character’s private thoughts. Indeed, the dual nature of each character’s interiority—at once perfectly private and absolutely open to public scrutiny—is ensured by the un-nameable and un-locatable nature of the narrator’s voice. It is by thus keeping secret the source of community concern—for we can never know precisely who speaks in the free indirect style— that the novel makes public the private thoughts of individual characters. (Finch, 1990: 5) This is a thorough explanation of the complex process the reader faces as he reads Emma—the reader does not always know who is speaking. Finch and

  Bowen go on to compare Austen’s technique with her eighteenth-century predecessors. They name and expand upon the various forms of narrative those predecessors used, namely, the subjective novel, whose first-person narrator is obviously announced; and the objective novel, with its confessed narrator. Both forms of narrative supply an identifiable source of authority. Emma falls under neither of these categories. Such a specific diviner does not exist in Emma, where the narrative authority of the novel is both nowhere and everywhere.

  Finch’s and Bowen’s (1990) noted the theory on the way that Austen uses her narrative style to reflect both individual and collective opinion. They said that Austen disseminates her narrative authority among her characters:

  ……then equally the novel’s deployment of free indirect style (which Austen first brought to fruition) has the effect of naturalizing narrative authority by disseminating it among the characters [. . .] so the development in Austen’s hands of free indirect style marks a crucial moment in the history of novelistic technique in which narrative authority is seemingly elided, ostensibly giving way to what Flaubert called a transparent style in which the author is “everywhere felt, but never seen.” (Finch, 1990: 3)

  Finally, Johnson credits the Revolution in France with the rise of the novel of crisis in England, in which she indicates the “structures of daily life are called into doubt” (Johnson, 1988: 26). Of Austen’s novels, she says:

  The novels of Jane Austen focus on the discourse rather than the representation of politics. Alluding only rarely to actual events outside her famously placid villages, Austen does not, it is true, explicitly invoke the French Revolution [. . .] Austen may slacken the desperate tempos employed by her more strenuously politicized counterparts, but she shares their artistic strategies and their commitment to uncovering the ideological underpinnings of cultural myths. (Johnson, 1988: 27) This overview of criticism on Austen has revealed the important connections between authorial intent, narrative viewpoint, and feminine vocalization. Not unexpectedly, critics from Austen’s time slotted her novels into the romantic novel genre and viewed her work strictly in that sense; later nineteenth century critics noted humor as an additional dimension to her writing.

  By the twentieth and twenty-first century, Austen was being reappraised in light of the many subtle features she employs to develop both her stories and her characters. Modern scholars extensively analyze Austen’s control of her narrative and her use of Emma as a kind of third-person narrator, reporting her own experience, thereby engendering sympathy at critical moments. Some explore Austen’s free indirect style of consciousness to reveal her important characters’ inner thoughts, both to themselves and to the reader; others examine her technique of mingling the narrator’s voice with the character’s consciousness.

  Various scholars evaluate the way Austen’s free indirect style aids in her use of irony, while some explore the opportunity it affords Austen in reflecting both individual and collective opinion via the gossip in the novel. A number of scholars study Austen’s use of the sentimental novel to exemplify the public and private concept of class and gender. The multi-faceted criticism of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has yielded scholarly articles about Austen’s narrative techniques, her feminist leanings, and her use of irony, and also about the society in the novel itself.

  Moreover, Spinker (1987) analyzes the social and economic distinctions appear in Emma. Spinker states that the categorization of people according to social or economic distinctions often plays a pivotal role in Jane Austen’s novels. Although Emma proves no exception to this model, the classification of characters as Aristos may be more relevant than dividing them into social classes. Aristos characters also recognize that they are of the “Many,” but they must constantly strive to be of the “Few” (Fowles, Aristos 212-13). Although this may seem elitist or snobbish, the distinctions between the Few and the Many are not external such as money or position but rather internal such as morality, values, and clear- sightedness.

  In addition, Gilmour (1981: 5, 16-21) also tries to explore the ideological implications of landlord in Emma by focusing on Jane Austen’s depiction of Mr.

  Knightley as an exemplary gentleman and landlord. She argues that in linking Mr. Knightley’s gentlemanly virtues with his owning land, and Emma’s moral inadequacies with her money and her lack of property, Austen, acting as an apologist for the landed classes, was defending the “paternal system of government” from attacks stimulated by the new discourse on political economy, attacks that challenged the hereditary right of the gentry and aristocracy to the exclusive monopoly of the land.

  Finally, though this is not the first study of social condition in Emma, this study tries to reveal the class-consciousness in the Victorian Society related to the values within it by using Jameson’s theory.

B. Theoretical Review 1. Marxism in Literature

  Literary works are not mysteriously inspired, or explicable simply in terms of their authors’ psychology. They are forms of perception of seeing the world. Moreover, Marxists believe that economic and social conditions determine religious beliefs, legal systems and cultural frameworks. Art should not only represent such conditions truthfully, but seek to improve them. Marxist aesthetics is not flourishing in today's consumerist society, but continues to ask responsible questions ( http://www.textetc.com/theory.html).

  Though the founder of Marxism, Karl Marx is better known because of his economical and political rather than literary writings, he frequently refers to literature in his writings. Literature may be part of the superstructure, but it is not merely the passive reflection of the economic base. Engels as quoted by Eagleton in Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976: 9) said that:

  According to the materialist conception of history, the determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. If therefore somebody twists this into the statement that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure – political forms of the class struggle and its consequences, constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc. – forms of law – and then even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the combatants: political, legal, and philosophical theories, religious ideas and their further development into systems of dogma – also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form.

  In addition, he states that art is far richer and more opaque than political and economic theory because it is less purely ideological. His remark suggests that art has a more complex relationship to ideology than law and political theory, which rather more transparently embody the interests of a ruling class.

  In Lukács’s view (1923 History and Class Consciousness), realism means more than rendering the surface appearance: it means providing a more complete, true, vivid and dynamic view of the world around. Novels are reflections of life, and therefore not real, but they nonetheless involve the mental framing that elude photographic representation. Writers create an image of the richness and complexity of society, and from this emerges a sense of order within the complexity and contradictions of lived experience.

  Furthermore, the French Marxist Louis Althusser regards society as de- centered, having no overall structure or governing principle. Levels exist, but in complex relationships of inner conflict and mutual antagonism: a far cry from the economic foundations of simple Marxism. Art is something between science and ideology, the latter being “a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to the real conditions of their existence” (Louis Althusser’s For Marx, 1977, as cited by John Holcombe in his article at

  http://www.textetc.com/althusser.html

  ). Art is therefore not entirely a fiction, nor of course the view of its author.

  More recently, the English Marxist Terry Eagleton (1976: 1 – 19) states that literary criticism should become a science, but rejects the hope that literature could distance itself from ideology. Literature is simply a reworking of ideology, by which Eagleton means a reworking of all those representations – aesthetic, religious, judicial – which shape an individual's mental picture of lived experience.

  Finally, the American Marxist Fredric Jameson (1981) sees ideology as strategies of containment which allow societies to explain themselves by repressing the underlying contradictions of history. Texturally, these containments show themselves as formal patterns. Some are inescapable. Narrative, for example, is how reality presents itself to the human mind, in science as well as art. And reality still exists, exterior to human beings: Jameson does not accept the view that everything is just a text. Indeed, in his reading of Conrad’s Lord Jim, Jameson shows how past interpretations - impressionist, Freudian, Existential, etc.

• both express something in the text and describe the demand for capital in the modern state.

2. The Definition of Class

  Raymond Williams in his book Culture and Society 1780 – 1950 said that class could be dated in its most important modern sense, from about 1740 (1961: 14). Before that time, the ordinary use of class is to refer to a division of group in schools and colleges. Then, at the end of the eighteenth century, the modern structure of class, in its social sense, begins to be built up. The new use of class does not indicate the beginning of social divisions in England, but it indicates a change in attitudes towards them. Class is more indefinite word than rank.

  Furthermore, the decisive step from taxonomy – classifying things – to theology – a set of religious beliefs – was taken by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, whose polemical writings divide humankind under capitalism into two classes, wage laborers who produce surplus and capitalists who appropriate it. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat are each with its own consciousness and organization (1961: 20).

  Jameson in his book The Political Unconscious differentiates social class into two, namely a dominant and a laboring class (1982: 83-84). Though this term is previously and generally used by other Marxist, Jameson employs this term as he wants to position the class fraction or ec-centric or dependent classes. Jameson emphasizes that the usage of these terms is to “differentiate the Marxian model of classes from the conventional sociological analysis of society into strata, subgroups, professional elites and the like”. He adds that:

  For Marxism, however, the very content of a class ideology is relational, in the sense that its values are always actively in situation with respect to the opposing class, and defined against the latter: normally, a ruling class ideology will explore various strategies of the legitimation of its own power position, while an oppositional culture or ideology will, often in covert and disguised strategies, seek to contest and to undermine the dominant value system. (1982: 84)

3. Fredric Jameson’s Marxism

  An American Marxist, Fredric Jameson is generally considered to be one of the foremost contemporary Marxist literary critics writing in English. He has published a wide range of works analyzing literary and cultural texts and developing his own neo-Marxist theoretical position. In addition, Jameson has produced a large number of texts criticizing opposing theoretical positions. A prolific writer, he has assimilated an astonishing number of theoretical discourses into his project and has intervened in many contemporary debates while analyzing a diversity of cultural texts, ranging from the novel to video, from architecture to postmodernism. Jameson views Marxism more than just a means of production, but it is also about social and culture.

  Jameson’s first book, developed from his Ph.D. dissertation, was Sartre:

  The Origins of a Style